Games

Finished Devil May Cry 4. It has some really high highs (Credo) and some really low lows (the Savior). I hate the amount of input reading in the Dante boss fight, coupled with his 0-frame response time it's just completely ridiculous. It feels less like you're fighting a boss and more like you just trial and error until you find the exploits in the code, which is not fun. On the other end, the fucking stage lighting and monologuing during the Agnus intro absolutely rules. I mostly like Nero's moveset, Snatch perfectly fixes the problem of "what the fuck do I do after using Stinger to initiate", and the Buster rules, especially all the special boss grabs. HOWEVER the fucking exceed mechanic is dogshit. Hmm, will I learn the proper frame-perfect timing for EX-MAX or will I just mash LT and hope for the best in a game that's like 15 hours long? There are also too many cutscenes and agonizingly slow menus.

Started Devil May Cry 5, about halfway through. So far the bosses have been extremely underwhelming, and the three Urizen fights (so far!) have each been more garbo than the last, not helped by the fact that you lose in a cutscene anyway every time. Seems like the scoring is way more forgiving, because I have like 50% of missions S-ranked. Nero's still fun enough, though the way the Breakers work is kinda lame. The fact the newest one you pick up goes in the top of the list instead of the bottom means that the back half of my magazine has never changed. Also no sick Buster grabs. V is horrendous and I don't know how he made it into the game. It feels like the most efficient way to play is to just mash X and Y simultaneously, which kinda defeats the entire point of the game. Dante's moveset is fantastic, and his weapons have been after . Balrog is just fun, switching between punches and kicks (aka blow mode and suck mode) rules and the overheat mechanic is WAY more fun than Nero's Exceed.

spoiler

I can't believe they added the fucking motorcycle scene from DMC3 as a weapon and I was full when the title card popped up for Legendary Devil Sword: Dante and Sin Devil Trigger.

Other misc thoughts: Devil Trigger is an amazing combat song, sadly Subhuman and whatever V's is are both bad. On a similar note, I will play Vergil's campaign for the first time because I want to listen to Bury the Light. Nico's fun, though she feels like she comes out of nowhere and I would've preferred if Kyrie made a repeat appearance. Who's to say she couldn't have become useful in the intervening time?

As always, more Warframe, the quest for everything continues. Some misc tech problems on Linux. Seems like the game runs really, really badly (25fps instead of solid 60), but I can't tell why as settings are identical to my windows install. Also load times seem much worse, they've gone from near-instant to like 30 seconds every time. Might have to do some tweaks, but I also have a bigger problem: my preferred podcast program has to run in Wine and it keeps crashing

Tried to get Total Warhammer 3 working on Linux. Native, the game runs but in campaign everything is solid black except for UI and settlements, which is bizarre. Switched to Proton and it seems good, ran the battle benchmark and was getting good FPS, but loaded up a campaign and it was getting like 20fps which is ridiculous. Trying to change graphics while in-game crashed my whole PC and that was when I gave up for the day and started DMC5. Also from what little testing I did, it seemed like I wasn't seeing any load time reductions from my NVMe drive